Oracle Blog

Dave Levy Online

Jonathan's Show

Jonathan Schwartz was introduced by Trudy Norris-Grey, Sun's UK MD. He started with some illustrations of the changing nature of network technologies, the changing speed of change the growth of reliability, and their transitions to service propositions. He reminded me that when the car was first invented the chauffeur was employed to fix the car when it broke, and I'd never heard that the telephone network switch was invented by a mortician who believed that his business rival's girlfriend, the telephone company's switch operator was putting business his rival's way and wanted to remove her from the switch room. He invented an automated switch.

Jonathan also very graphically, by showing the picture taken in the London tube on July 7th, illustrated the change taking place in the internet by transforming to a read/write internet, to creating value through co-operation. These themes illustrate the nature of change and the new sources of value, driving and enabled by the internet.

He then argued that openness and the sharing of intellectual property creates opportunity. It neither kills, nor expropriates it exclusively for the inventor. As a long time Sun follower (and latterly employee), I feel that Sun is at its best when its creating markets and then competing in them. Sun are the No 1 Free & Open Source contributor on Earth, even before Jonathan's revolution - Sun contributes and has often given away the rights on technologies to maximise the chance of their adoption. The "proprietary" tag should never have been aimed at Sun's software, it was an abusive label thrown by our monopolistic competitors and now you can download our development tools.

He tipped a nod to the workload profiling ideology (see me here..., and the corporate pitch here...). which should be at the centre of datacentre design today. He then handed over to Mark Tremblay, the T1's Chief Architect.